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SEPTEMBER 01 -- ARLINGTON, VA: Rudolph Wendelin, developer and guardian of the Smokey Bear image, died yesterday at a nursing home in Falls Church. According to the Washington Post, Mr. Wendelin died as a result of injuries he received in August in an automobile accident in Norfolk. Rudolph Wendelin was born February 27, 1910 in Herndon, Kansas. He grew up in Kansas, and attended the University of Kansas School of Architecture and art schools in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Washington, D.C. He started work with the Forest Service in 1933 as a draftsman and illustrator in Milwaukee, and four years later was transferred to Washington D.C. Smokey was not the only art that he became famous for, though -- Wendelin was one of the artists invited to submit designs for the 1964 John Muir commemorative postage stamp. In addition to the art for the stamp, Wendelin also painted a portrait for Muir's inauguration into the National Wildlife Federation's Conservation Hall of Fame in 1965. Other well-known works of his include the 1958 Forest Conservation postage stamp, an adaptation of Charlie Russell's "The Trail Boss" as the design for the 1961 Range Conservation stamp, the 1969 John Wesley Powell stamp, and the 1984 Smokey Bear stamp. In 1973 Wendelin was awarded a Golden Smokey by the Forest Service, and in 1998 the Daughters of the American Revolution presented him with the Medal of Honor by for his dedication to the Smokey Bear campaign. When Wendelin retired from the Forest Service in 1973, he had painted Smokey in hundreds of settings, creating a broad and lasting legacy in natural resources conservation and forest fire prevention. The campaign became so popular that Smokey was protected by an Act of Congress. In August 1999 Smokey celebrated his 55th birthday. Smokey Bear was introduced to the public by the U.S. Forest Service and the War Advertising Council in 1944 as the symbol of the forest fire prevention campaign. Albert Staehle, a noted illustrator, painted the first bear, and his art appeared in the 1945 campaign. This first Smokey poster carried the caption: "Smokey says: Care will prevent 9 out of 10 forest fires." As the campaign grew, Smokey reached out to Americans from posters and roadside billboards, from the pages of magazines and newspapers, and over the air from hundreds of broadcasting stations. Many major corporations donated valuable advertising time and space. The result was great success for the Smokey Bear symbol and a decrease in accidental, human-caused forest fires. After World War II, the War Advertising Council changed its name to the Advertising Council. In the years that followed, the focus of Smokey's campaign broadened to appeal to children as well as adults. The earliest pictures of Smokey Bear varied in appearance from year to year, but his confident, friendly manner and the good sense of his fire prevention message were always there. During the 1965 campaign, artist Chuck Kuderna's work evolved Smokey's image into the one we know today. In addition to the public service advertising campaign, there were other needs for original art in the Cooperative Forest Fire Prevention Program. In 1946 Rudy Wendelin began producing a tremendous quantity of Smokey Bear art in a variety of media for special events, publications, and licensed products to promote the fire prevention symbol. Long after retiring, he created the art for the Smokey Bear's 40th anniversary commemorative U.S. Postage stamp. Wendelin is still affectionately known as "Smokey's artist." A 1988 study reported that Smokey was recognized more frequently than many other advertising symbols. Among children through junior high school, recognition was as high as 86 percent. Of all the people who knew him, most readily associated him with fire prevention and quoted his best-known message: "Only you can prevent forest fires." An important chapter in Smokey's long history began early in 1950, when a burned cub survived a fire in the Lincoln National Forest near Capitan, New Mexico. Because this bear survived a forest fire and won the love and imagination of the American public, many people mistakenly believe the cub was the original Smokey Bear. But in reality he did not come along until the advertising symbol was almost six years old. In Forest Service Animal Tales, a collection edited by USFS retirees Gil Davies and Flo Frank, Jay Cravens gives a first-hand account of the discovery of the burned cub. In 1950 Cravens was dispatched to the Capitan Gap Fire on the Lincoln National Forest. "The temperature was very high," he writes. "It was extremely dry and windy. The fire camp and our food were constantly buffeted by gale force winds. Wind-blown debris and sand were in everything we ate. It was a very dangerous fire." Cravens was on the fire with Harlow Yaeger, and Yaeger was assigned to the southwest sector running on to Capitan Mountain. "His company of soldiers were endangered by a crown fire and almost trapped before Harlow led them to safety on a rock slide. When the fire had passed around them, one of the soldiers heard mournful crying and whimpering sounds. He found a tiny black bear cub clinging to the trunk of a burned tree. The cub's paws were badly burned and one of the soldiers carried him back to the fire camp. I was there when they arrived and the bear was handed to me. It was crying, whimpering, and licking its burned paws. I recall it crying as it chewed my leather gloves. I did not know at the time this 10-inch ball of black fur I held in my hands was to become the original Smokey Bear." After being nursed back to health, Smokey came to live at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., as a living counterpart to the Forest Service's fire prevention symbol. Over the years, thousands of people from around the world came to see Smokey Bear at the National Zoo. A mate, Goldie, was introduced with the hope that a young Smokey would continue the tradition of the famous living symbol. These efforts failed, though, and an adopted son was sent to the zoo so the aged bear could retire on May 2, 1975. After many years of popularity, the original Smokey died in 1976. His remains were returned to Capitan and laid to rest beneath a stone marker in Smokey Bear State Park. For more than 15 years, the adopted Smokey carried on as the living symbol, but in 1990, when the second Smokey Bear died, the living symbol was laid to rest.
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